


Verse, Chorus, Bridge

by crystalkei



Category: The Martian (2015), The Martian - All Media Types, The Martian - Andy Weir
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-20
Updated: 2015-10-20
Packaged: 2018-04-27 05:38:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5035906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crystalkei/pseuds/crystalkei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Beth Johanssen: brilliant mind, lover of video games, hot as hell, who wouldn’t want to date her? He’d wanted to since their first conversation. Though it was against every single rule in every single book NASA had ever printed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Verse, Chorus, Bridge

“Are you listening to Daft Punk?”

Beck startled Johanssen out of her work, she moved her headphones around her neck and looked at him with quick glances while still keeping her fingers moving over the keyboard in front of her.

“Yeah,” she answered giving him a small smile. He quirked an eyebrow at the strange choice. “I’m a singer, I mean not a good one or anything,” she stammered. “But I used to make my mom crazy with singing while I was working on homework and stuff, so she directed me towards music with less words, classical, jazz, electronica, she really wanted me to get hooked on Enya but that just made me fall asleep.”

Beck laughed and Johanssen couldn’t help but smile back.

“Daft Punk still has words,” he offered.

“Less than what I was listening to in middle school.”

“Do I even want to know?” He grinned and she looked back at her computer screen, a good excuse to avoid his eyes. No use looking like an idiot when you were gonna be stuck with a person in space for years.

“Rap, I listened to a lot of rap,” Johanssen said with a shrug.

“So you can rap?” Beck rested his hand on the back of her chair, leaning just a little closer and causing her to tip her head up and to look at him.

“No." She shook her head quickly. "Not at all, but I was loud, hence my mom’s reaction.”

“Good to know,” he said as though he really were filing the information away for future reference. She wanted to send a note to the engineers, she was definitely removing any equipment that someone could turn into a karaoke machine from Hermes. (Surely NASA would have no such thing, but you couldn’t be too safe.)

“My dad listened to Daft Punk on long car trips, my favorite is that...uh, it’s a long song.” Beck rubbed his fingers together like he might snap to get his brain synapses firing but instead he just worked his thumb across his pointer and middle fingers a few seconds. “ _Too Long_ , what a dumb name for a song, but that was my favorite.”

“I know that one, it’s pretty good,” she said and then cringed a little, embarrassed at her own reaction. “Anyway, I should get back to it.” Johanssen tilted her head towards her computer.

“What are you working on?” he asked moving his hand from the back of her chair and pulling back, putting distance between the two of them.

“Emergency trajectories in case we encounter solarwinds beyond 450 kilometers per second,” she said turning back to her screen.

“The ship will course correct for us. Why are you doing that?” Beck asked confused.

“I dared her to,” Martinez said from his terminal a few feet away without even looking. “She’s a competitive geek. But thanks for distracting her, whoever gets the math first gets to sleep in tomorrow.”

Now Beck looked at her sheepishly. “I didn’t know, I’m sorry.”

“No big, I’m already done, I just didn’t want Martinez to think I’d smoked him that badly. I’m trying to keep his morale up.” She made a flourish of hitting the enter key to finish the equations.

“What?” Martinez shouted before throwing his arms up in frustration. “Come on, I was close, like four more lines and I’d have been there.”

Johanssen leaned around to give Martinez a look of patronizing pity. “It’s my turn to do a full systems check tomorrow morning so be sure that gets done, loser.”

She tried to ignore the way the Beck looked at her: equal parts proud and entertained.

 

\--

 

Johanssen knocked on the wall closest to Beck’s work station. He pulled an earbud out and gave her his full attention.

“That sounds angry,” she said. He tilted his head, confused for a second as to what she was referring to until the song from his earbuds hit the chorus. Johanssen wasn’t wrong, it did sound angry.

“The guy’s girlfriend cheated on him,” he explained. “Then she swore they could make it work and strung him along for a while before he finally decided to dump her because she wasn’t going to change, even though he wanted to marry her, the whole EP is aggressive." He realized that sounded bad so he tried to make it sound better, "But in a fun way you can sing along to.”

“Biographical?” she asked, her eyes sparkling like a fucking Disney princess. Jesus, he was in too deep.

“No.” He shook his head furiously. “I mean, not exactly. Who hasn’t had a bad breakup though, right?”

She gnawed on her lower lip and Beck tried to focus on her eyes for obvious reasons. “I haven’t actually.”

He scoffed. “Right, because you’re the one doing the dumping usually, huh? Who would break up with you?” Beck immediately regretted the words but she smiled.

“No, I just,” she stalled a second and tucked some hair behind her ear, her gaze landed somewhere near his knees. When Johanssen looked back up at him she looked a little pink in the cheeks. “I’m not a relationship person. Or maybe relationships don’t want to be a Beth thing.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” She had to be messing with him. Beth Johanssen: brilliant mind, lover of video games, hot as hell, who wouldn’t want to date her? He’d wanted to since their first conversation. Though it was against every single rule in every single book NASA had ever printed.

 

She shrugged. “I never had much time and then it was NASA so yeah, that’s about it.”

“How did every person at MIT not fall at your feet?” His shock had him forgetting to be professional. Johanssen made a face.

“I was very young at MIT. And very focused,” she explained sounding embarrassed. “I mean, I’m not like some kind of 29 year old virgin. Okay,” she said closing her eyes tightly. “You already know that. You’ve seen my medical records, you update my medical records weekly, and that’s not what you were asking, shit, I, uh, uhhh...”

“No, I shouldn’t have,” he started but was distracted by the ding of the microwave on the workstation across from his.

“We just popped some popcorn to watch the show,” Watney said as Martinez retrieved the bag from the microwave.

“Yeah, pretend we’re not even here!” Martinez opened the bag and offered it to Watney.

“I’m very sure there’s an alarm about to go off on the bridge. I just came to say Commander Lewis wanted you to triple check airlock four because she floated by and it made a ‘creak’ she didn’t like,” Johanssen dumped all the info and ran off, her face was definitely red now. Beck turned on the assholes behind him.

“Gimme that popcorn,” he demanded. Martinez handed it over and he and Watney started to laugh in earnest. “The next time we’re on Earth, I’m gonna…” He had nothing. Turns out Beck was really bad at trash talk.

"Do you think you'll have some kind of a comeback before we get to Mars or are you thinking it will come to you on the way back?" Watney ribbed, that smug grin of his stretched across his face. 

“He’s like a cartoon villain that has a heart of gold,” Martinez added. 

“Just don’t do that again, guys, I can embarrass myself just fine but I don’t want Beth to feel uncomfortable,” he tried.

“Aw, Beth.” Martinez put his chin in his hands, Watney followed suit.

“I’ll be in airlock four,” he snapped taking the popcorn with him.

 

\--

  
  


Watney was back from the dead. The insane plan from NASA and Rich Purcell worked like a charm, okay not like a charm but it worked and no one died. They were two nights out from Earth. And apparently Commander Lewis was feeling excited. Disco had been blasting all day despite the groans, complaints, and even the very dramatic false fainting of Mark.

“Technically _Heart of Glass_ was meant to mock disco, Watney,” Lewis said as she rocked her shoulders back and forth.

“That is not true,” Vogel piped up from his seat in the rec room. “It was just gossip. Debbie Harry said she loved disco.”

Lewis pointed to Vogel and gave him an uncharacteristically huge smile. “I don’t care if you just suggested I was wrong, you’re on my side about Blondie so you get brownie points.” Watney leaned his head back against the couch like he might be able to disappear into it while Martinez stood up and started to dance towards the Commander.

Everyone knew about Beck and Johanssen by now because of the overheating of Martinez’s bunk. The ride back to Earth had been (thankfully) uneventful. They’d all have enough excitement for three lifetimes. But Johanssen and Beck still made their own rules to keep things professional during working hours. And it was technically still working hours. They just didn’t have much work to do at this point, hence the impromptu disco party.

“Care to dance?” Beck asked as he sidled up behind Johanssen.

“No, thank you.” He was moving behind her causing her to laugh, he wrapped his arms around her middle as he continued to move his hips side to side. Johanssen rolled her eyes but started to move along with him, putting her hands over his on her stomach.

“Would you be more comfortable if we dug out some of Vogel’s rap? I bet he’s got some Kanye.” His breath tickled the skin of her neck, she turned in his arms and pushed against his chest.

“Do not tell people about that!” He snorted and she glared as long as she could before laughing herself. “Trust me, no one but you would be entertained by that.”

“Highly doubt it,” he said giving her a wink. “A hot, astronaut nerd who raps? You’d go viral easy.”

“Did someone say rap?” Martinez stopped mid dance move. Johanssen covered Beck’s mouth with her hand to stop him from replying.

“I think he’s gone crazy listening to disco. Watney claims that’s a real thing so we probably shouldn’t listen to anything our flight surgeon has to say. Thank God we’re almost home. I’m sure NASA’s been working on a cure since Mark’s first complaint.” Her explanation had everyone laughing and distracted. Beck moved her hand away from his mouth and scrunched up his face.

“Jesus, I love you,” he whispered so only she could hear it. It caught her off guard but she covered that well enough by taking his hand and spinning herself around as the music went on. When she got back from her miniscule orbit she leaned into him, fitting her cheek against his.

“Yeah, me too.”

 

\--

  
  


“By the way,” Beck said pulling off his shirt before climbing into the small bunk they shared. “When we get home, you’re 10 days out from needing a new Depo shot. It wouldn’t have been a problem but you know, our mission went long so the stash is depleted here...”

“Is this my boyfriend or the flight surgeon of the Ares 3 mission speaking right now?” she asked perching herself on the edge of the bunk, using a wet wipe to clean her face.

“Both?”

“I assume you keep meticulous records so why are you reminding me? Especially since you’ll also be debriefing the medical team handling our post mission physicals?”

He propped his head up on his arm, his back was against the wall now, and he tried for nonchalance. “Just letting you know.”

“It’s a weird thing to just let me know,” she parroted his words back. “This feels like a big moment conversation we’re having right before bed on the eve of returning to our home planet.”

“You talked to Mark too long today. Did he tell you he’s a space pirate again?” Johanssen smiled.

“Sometimes you just gotta let the guy talk and remember we left him for dead so he really deserves the chance to talk our ears off about ridiculous things like maritime law and it’s connection to Mars.”

Beck smiled fondly at her. “Not a big moment thing, letting you know so you can be informed in case you wanted to change your birth control. Not that we know much about how space affects reproductive systems that have been exposed for an extended period of time. The Ares 3 crew is the longest.”   
  
“Is our sex life going to be an experiment now?” Johanssen narrowed her eyes at him.

“Another Depo shot would mean another 12-14 months before you could get pregnant. It’s something to consider.” He couldn’t look at her face. He shouldn’t have said anything. This was a terrible thing to even bring up, he was making a fool of himself.

“Is your biological clock ticking?” she asked lying down next to him now, her fingers caressed the crows’ feet at the corner of his eyes.

“Are you calling me old?” he asked with a pout.

“You gonna hone in on the point soon, old man?” Johanssen teased, moving her hand along the side of his face before giving him a chaste kiss.

“Life just feels a little shorter since space tried to kill us and our friends,” he admitted.

“Yeah, it does.”

“And I’m totally okay going months without seeing other people on this ship, but I’m not keen on going back to sleeping alone. I like this. I wanna do this pretty much always.” He hoped the honestly would win her over.

“But with a bigger bed. Like queen or larger. The bed I’ve got in storage is a California king. We can use yours if you have some kind of weird preference,” Johanssen offered.

“I should be surprised that someone as small as you sleeps on a bed made for a giant but I’m not,” Beck said before kissing her softly. “I actually don’t have a bed anymore. I gave it to my sister before I left.”

“So we don’t have a place to live when we get out of medical quarantine, our stuff is in storage, do you even know what you’re going to do when all this settles down? You’ve got research coming out of your ears. I’ve got three job offers in Pasadena and exactly one in DC, where you’ll be. And my parents would flip their shit if we had a baby before we got married so I think 14 months is plenty of time to figure it out.” He nodded in understanding, at least she hadn’t flat out turned him down. “But yeah I was already considering the pill when we get home. At least until we’re more settled.”

Beck’s mouth dropped open. “You were just fucking with me? You let me flounder around and embarrass myself like that?” 

Johanssen rolled over now, pushing her back against his chest and getting comfortable on her pillow.

“Yeah, it was fun to watch.”

“That’s mean,” Beck said kissing along her neck.

“But fun.” She elbowed him and he laughed against her skin. “The real question is how is it that we had enough Depo on board to get me this far. You must have been pretty confident you were gonna get laid.” 

“Nah, actually Commander Lewis was also supposed to be on Depo shots but a few days before departure quarantine she decided to switch to an IUD so we had double the necessary dosage of Depo.”

“Watney isn’t the only one who had some luck on this adventure,” she said before gasping as Beck’s hand slipped from her stomach into her pants. Johanssen bit her lip but Beck’s practiced fingers worked her quickly. She moaned despite Beck shushing her.

 

And that’s when Marvin Gaye started to blast through the wall.

Beck lost it immediately, leaning his forehead against her shoulder blade and laughing into her back. Johanssen, though, was pissed.

“Martinez!” she shouted.

The music receded before Martinez shouted back, “Some of us won’t get laid until after arrival quarantine so until you’re respectful of that, I’m gonna play _Let’s Get It On_!”

“Everyone heard him. Everyone heard the music,” Johanssen whined.

“Definitely everyone,” Beck agreed removing his hand from her pants and resting it back on her stomach.

“Commander Lewis has earplugs so probably not her,” Martinez answered while Johanssen put her head under her pillow embarrassed.

“We’re going to sleep,” Beck yelled towards the wall they shared with Martinez. “You can turn Marvin off!”

The music shut off completely and Beck rolled onto his back. “Maybe tomorrow morning before everyone gets up we can finish that?”

“Or we could slip out right now and verify that airlock 4 is in good working condition.”

“I did hear it making that creaking noise Lewis doesn’t like, we should probably check it out,” he suggested. Johanssen rolled out of the bunk and tossed Beck his sweatshirt. 

“Good plan.”

  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> The music is that Beck is listening to is a pop punk band called Dozer TX. You can find them on spotify. :)


End file.
